


Goddamn, manchild

by LLitchi



Category: KOllOK 1991 (Web Series)
Genre: Daddy Issues, Daddy Kink, Love Triangles, M/M, Self-Harm, bros being bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:49:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26388943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLitchi/pseuds/LLitchi
Summary: Mallory finds some less destructive ways to deal. One of them involves sleeping with Em’s dad.
Relationships: Mallory Jenkins/Billy Baker, Mallory Jenkins/Jay Pegg
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Goddamn, manchild

**Author's Note:**

> Warning policy: I comply with archive warning and do not warn for anything else.

The upsides of having Hank and Laura live with him are many, but Mallory can’t remember any of them right now because the downside is that they are constantly up on his ass. Whenever he’s in the bathroom for more than five minutes, bam, somebody’s banging on the door, and for some reason the other bathroom is always occupied. Does Hank really have to shit that much? Because Laura is always saying he is. The only time Mallory gets to himself is when he takes the car and basically strands them inside his house, but then he wouldn’t have the privacy of his own home and he couldn’t do anything in the car anyway. That car is probably crawling with bacteria and shit, given all the clandestine and gay things his dead dad probably did in it.

As soon as he gets some time to himself, though.

Mallory knows he wants to be safe. Tibby can’t heal him anymore, so he has to do everything himself, and he doesn’t want an infection or do anything that’s gonna make him bleed out like a bitch. It’s gonna have to be smaller stuff working up to bigger things.

Mrs. Pegg probably doesn’t want to help him, and he can’t tell her anyway. He does remember from somewhere that if he tells his therapist he wants to hurt himself, she will turn him in and lock him away. It wouldn’t even be her fault. She has to do it. So the next time his appointment comes up, he goes a little early. He knows who has the appointment right before he does. It’s Mr. Cassidy. And in a small town like Kollok everyone knows what Mr. Cassidy has to go to therapy for.

Mr. Cassidy reluctantly gives Mallory some advice. Don’t do it in while he’s showering. No razors. Get a paper cutter and disinfect it. There are ways to tell when he’s lost too much blood and is about to pass out. The way they do it across the arm on TV is okay, just don’t do it down the vein. Legs are better, but there’s just nothing that beats the drama of doing it close to the wrists. And Mallory takes it seriously. He takes notes. He wants to keep himself safe.

***

The first time Mallory gets the house to himself is when Hank goes to school and Laura goes to work. He thinks his voice doesn’t give away anything when he waves them goodbye but he can’t be sure, because he’s too nervous, too desperate to try it out, to see if it’s going to be as good as he thinks it is. He’s had everything he needs for a week, and now he has all day. All the time in the world.

He’s shaking a little when he makes the cut. The first one is not deep enough. The second one is. It stings, and the bathtub is cold even through his shirt at first, but as he watches the blood trickle from his arm and flow into the drain he slowly begins to feel nothing but a zen like calm. The world falls away, Mallory not being able to focus on anything but the blood, stark red against his arm, against the white of the tub, almost glowing in the light. This one thing makes sense like nothing else does: If he cuts himself, he bleeds.

If he bleeds out, he dies.

He can’t remember what makes dying so bad. He’s just a clone. There are so many other Mallories to replace him, and he’s not so sure he isn’t just as defective as they all were. No good clone of Mearl Jenkins would be such a fuck up. A councilmember, versus his drug dealer son. A school principal vs one of that school’s worst graduates. Mallory Jenkins is like a paper copy that’s faded out where all the words are jumbled and the lines are crooked. His maker took one look at the copy, crumbled it up and threw it away. Mallory Jenkins is destined for the garbage bin.

This way his friends will be better off too. Em won’t have to constantly save him and put herself in danger anymore. He’s never really done anything to help them anyway, except for letting them stay at his place and driving them around in his car. They would probably miss him, but his mom was also probably right. No one can love him more than she does, not even Hank or Em Pegg.

***

When Hank returns home and immediately plays Sonic with Mallory, he does feel a little guilty for thinking so badly of his friends. In the moment his head felt so clear, the sheer stinging sensation of it keeping him tethered to Earth. The cut under his sleeves reminds him now. He discreetly presses against it, and feels fucking alive.

“Dude, are you good?” Hank asks. “You’re kind of letting me beat you today.”

They are sprawled on the couch together, Hank slumped comfortably on top of him, pushing them both to one side. There’s a minor miracle in the way their awkward, teenaged bodies can slot together like this, and Mallory already knows what Laura will say when she comes home and sees them, but it’s nothing they haven’t done before, and it’s no worse than him literally kissing Em’s dad.

“No man, you’re just doing super great.”

Hank shifts, his legs falling across Mallory’s thighs.

“Did you have an interview today?”

Mallory misses a jump.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, you changed your clothes. You’re wearing a button-down now.”

“Oh,” Mallory says, relieved. “Yeah, I did have an interview.”

“I like that shirt,” Hank says shyly. “Makes you look more grown up.”

“Yeah?” Mallory asks. He feels warm. Everything he feels is fuzzier, headier today. “I think I’ll wear this shirt more often then.”

“Get glasses too,” Hank says. “You’ll look smarter and you won’t squint as much.”

“Do I squint a lot?”

“You squint a ton,” Hank grumbles, hitting the buttons on his controller too hard. “And it always looks like you’re winking.”

“Is that why Em Pegg seems like she’s avoiding me, because I look like I’m winking at her?”

“The Peggs are too weak to your wink.”

“I can’t do anything about being too handsome,” Mallory says. “But you can tell Tibby to stop avoiding me too. I won’t make him heal me again.”

Hank doesn’t respond for a long time.

When they die and have to repeat the level, Hank finally says, quiet like he’s trying to be careful and he doesn’t know how: “Hey. Are you doing better now?”

Mallory resists the urge to press against the cut.

“Yeah,” he says, surprised to find that it’s the truth. “I really am.”

***

Mallory’s band-aid constantly slips off because he checks on it anytime he gets a chance. He can’t help himself though, he wants to see how different it is every time, how it’s healing, how his body is coming back from losing so much blood. Once he presses on it too hard and the skin breaks open again, and afterward he watches his body knit itself back together, evidence that he’s still human, still here, and despite the best efforts of Kollok’s supernatural and alien forces, still alive.

Who the fuck cares if he’s unemployable or some shit because everybody knows he used to sell weed? He’s been through so much worse, like being choked by the Sheriff and being chased by cannibals, that he should be able to get around a little criminal record, easy. But at least during those times something like his survival instinct kicks in, this intense desire to live without really knowing why, and for a moment he can trick himself into thinking that there is something worth living for, beyond minimum wage at Taco Bell.

He thought he fixed it by running for Mayor. Fucking Marcus, that little bitch.

“Don’t be too nice to me,” he told Em once, in all sincerity. She took it to mean that he would mistake her affection for romantic interest, and he did, but he also meant that he wanted it to hurt less when she inevitably leaves him behind. If Marcus could, and if his dad could, then any one of them would. He has fuck all to tie them to him, except for his house which he’ll lose if he doesn’t magically find a job soon. If he loses the house he’ll no longer be their cool older friend. He’ll just be their homeless, drug dealing friend who goes around kissing all of their dads.

Tibby, that little dweeb, once asked him straight up if he had “daddy issues.” Probably yeah, no shit, since his dad fucking died. And he has no one now, no one he knows for sure will take him in and be there when he fucks up. Laura would probably understand, but she has skills and shit, and a job, and no criminal record, so she probably doesn’t really understand. Like his dad was right there, and then he’s gone, and then fucking Marcus just upped and left. Everything went from chill to not chill. Sometimes he can’t even imagine what his life was like before. He kind of thought Marcus and his dad would be there forever, the three of them in some perpetual orbit, and he can’t even say that he misses them now, because he doesn’t. It hurts too much to think about them is all.

***

He feels better when he cuts, so maybe Mrs. Pegg should pay him money and not the other way around. Sometimes he’ll do it right before a session just to make himself feel more at ease, and then he could tell her that he’s doing really well and that he might soon be able to stop their appointments, and have it sound real.

Slowly he makes his way up his right arm. He thinks he wants to leave his left arm untouched. Like maybe if anyone gets suspicious or something, he could roll up his left sleeve, and show them he’s fine. Better than fine. He’s helping himself get better, which is what Mrs. Pegg always fucking said he should.

Also, how good could she possibly be at her job if even Em Pegg noticed it and she didn’t?

Hank ruins it first by saying how often Mallory’s wearing long sleeves.

“Can you uh,” Em Pegg says, as bossy as ever. “Can you roll up your sleeves for me?”

They’re in his dad’s office. Mallory doesn’t want to do this in his dad’s office.

Hank doesn’t understand yet. Luckily Laura isn’t here, or she might have tried to hold him down.

“I thought you were dating Ven?” Mallory says.

Em Pegg rolls her eyes. “I don’t want you to take off your clothes you nerd. I just want you to roll up your sleeves.”

“Mallory doesn’t have to do anything if he doesn’t want to,” Hank says immediately, stepping in between them. Ever since Em’s dad kissed Mallory, Hank has made it some sort of personal mission to protect Mallory’s virtue from the Peggs.

“Yeah,” Mallory says. “I don’t have to do anything.”

“Hank,” Em says, frustrated. “I’m trying to see if Mallory’s been cutting himself and you’ve just been too wrapped up in your own shit to notice.”

“What?”

“What?” Mallory screeches. “How the fuck did you jump to that conclusion?”

“Hi, hey,” she says. “Therapist’s daughter. You’ve been wearing that windbreaker constantly. You’ve been going to the bathroom a lot and for a long time. You’ve been surprisingly diligent on doing the laundry, which means you’re probably trying to hide blood stains.”

“Yeah, I know you’re your mom’s daughter. You realize that your mom sees me every week and she doesn’t think anything’s wrong.”

“Why can’t you just show me your arms?”

“Because this is weird and you just accused me and I don’t want to!”

Mallory realizes he’s been shouting when Hank is right in his face, and has a hold on both of his arms.

“Mallory.”

Cold dread. Mallory snatches his arms away, but he flinches.

Because it hurts.

Hank and Em Pegg already knew before Em carefully rolls the sleeve of Mallory’s right arm up. It doesn’t look that bad. There’s a band-aid over the most recent one, the deepest, the farthest Mallory’s been able to go. He thinks he felt it tear just then; probably looks angrier and redder since he last checked on it. But the rest, almost-neat horizontal lines down his arms in various states of healing…it doesn’t look that incriminating. It isn’t that bad.

“It doesn’t hurt anyone,” Mallory says quickly. “Tibby was right. If I did something reckless again you’d all have to cover my ass, and this is fine. I just have to contain it, so no one gets hurt.”

“No one gets hurt,” Em repeats incredulously.

“I’m not getting hurt, I’m getting better. I’m doing this properly with disinfectants and shit.”

“Mallory,” Hank says. “I don’t understand.”

“I feel better when I do this,” Mallory explains, half-heartedly attempting to tug his arm away. “It helps. Nothing else helps.”

Em is almost angry. “ _We_ can help.”

“Then why haven’t you?”

“Mallory—”

He already knew it was an unfair question.

“Are you going to tell your mom? You know you can’t tell your mom, ‘cause she’s gonna put me in a mental hospital like the one that Jack Nicholson was in.”

Em huffs. “I have to. And that’s not how therapy works.”

Hank is instantly back on Mallory’s side.

“You can’t tell her. He doesn’t want you to.”

“If you tell her,” Mallory promises, “we aren’t friends anymore.”

“Mallory!” Hank snaps back to him. “Don’t say that.”

Mallory manages to get his arm back when Em is temporarily too stunned to speak. “Why not? I mean it.”

“He doesn’t mean it.”

Mallory hates this. He’s been doing so well. Everyone thinks he’s been doing fine, mainly because every time he feels like he needs to break something he can just press his fingers against one of the cuts, and every time his world narrows down to his loneliness and his uselessness he can just grab his kit, go into the bathroom, and focus on something else. If he doesn’t have this he’s probably going to start doing real suicidal shit again, and everybody is going to die trying to save his ass.

“This literally doesn’t hurt anyone,” Mallory says again. “Remember how you were shot and you were left in the fucking 40’s? That’s what’s gonna happen if I don’t have this.”

Em shakes her head.

“That’s not the point you idiot.”

“Mallory’s not an idiot,” Hank says automatically.

“Look,” Mallory says. “I’m not going to make Tibby help me. Why can’t this just be something I have for myself, and the three of us can like, agree that no one else ever needs to know?”

Em crosses her arms. “Do you really not know what the point is? The point is that you have to deal with your problem, not just try to cope with it.”

“I can’t bring my dad back,” Mallory says, counting off his fingers. “I can’t make Marcus magically not suck dick, and I can’t make myself magically not a drug dealer. So.”

“We can help you,” Hank says. “Well, we can’t bring your dad back, but I don’t think you liked him that much.”

“You’re teenagers.” Mallory raises his voice. “And I’m broke. I just want my dad, man.”

Hank grabs Mallory’s hand, strangely careful and tender again.

“Really?”

“That’s all I’ve been saying,” Mallory mutters. “I just want my piece of shit dad back.”

His head feels heavy. If he could just rewind to that moment before his dad died, that would be so fucking good. He wouldn’t have to worry about interdimensional bullshit and he can just sit back and smoke weed and talk about nothing all day with Marcus, summer days stretching out before them, as endless as a dream. Now there’s at least five emergencies a week where for whatever godforsaken reason people expect him to do things he can’t and be someone he’s not.

Mallory hates Em right now. Her parents are weird but they’re alive. They can give her advice and take care of her and they had actually prepared her for the world. She can’t tell him to deal with his problems if his biggest problem is that his dad died.

Fuck, his dad died. He is so fucking lost.

What the fuck would he even do when they take his house away? He doesn’t know any lawyer or even any adult who would help him. He reaches for his arm and presses against the band-aid, wanting it to break the skin, wanting that sharp focus of the pain to bring him out of this spiral, when he feels like he’s sinking in quicksand. Outside of him, everything turning dark.

His arm flares with stinging, painful heat. His world sharpens. He finds himself back with Hank and Em.

“Mallory,” Hank says, and then Mallory looks up in time to see Hank hug him, a surprisingly steady and tight hug. “We can’t bring your dad back. I’m sorry dude.”

“Yeah,” Em says. “I’m sorry.”

But she also makes him promise to go to them first whenever he gets the urge to cut himself, to talk about his feelings some more, so she must not have been as understanding as she pretended to be right then.

***

Mallory doesn’t know why he first approached Jay Pegg.

As always, it was Em’s fault. She mentioned, casually and in passing, that Jay Pegg and Mearl Jenkins used to be a thing, and maybe, just maybe, that attraction to Jay Pegg is genetic. Mallory is horrified by the idea, but he kinda also wants to know what his dad saw in a weird, DnD obsessed man.

The first time it happens, even Mrs. Pegg is in the room. She invites him to stay for some snacks after their appointment, because beyond their relationship as patient and therapist, Mallory is still their daughter’s friend.

“What was my dad like?” Mallory blurts out, when Mr. Pegg is going on another tangent about how he and his dad look too much alike.

“Oh,” Mrs. Pegg says. She clears her throat, and slips out of the room. “I’ll leave you two be. I think I hear my next appointment coming up to the house.”

Mallory doesn’t mind, since a whole kitchen table still separates him and Mr. Pegg.

“You don’t need to—” Mr. Pegg says, and then, “Mr. Jenkins, you must know your dad better than I do.”

“I don’t actually.”

Mr. Pegg sits up. “You don’t?”

“We weren’t close.” Mallory looks away. “By the end we kind of went home at different times and just had our meals separately. I just—I just want to know what kind of person he was other than like, being a school principal and a councilmember or whatever.”

There’re sounds of shuffling as Mr. Pegg gets up and sits down next to him. Mallory doesn’t move.

“Well,” Mr. Pegg says. His eyes are far away. “Mearl was… He was very smart. He could be a jerk sometimes but when I was younger I liked that. He cared a lot about politics, as do I. Some of our views diverged when he was on the Council but, well, that happens when we grow up.”

Mallory turns toward Jay Pegg. “My dad never talked to me about politics.”

“Mearl supported the fracking,” Jay Pegg says, rueful. “I never understood that. When we were young we used to protest companies like Synchroneity, and then he became a politician like the rest of them and wouldn’t even hear me out.”

“He could be impatient with people he didn’t think were smart enough,” Mallory says.

Jay Pegg considers him. “That’s actually very perceptive of you, Mrs. Jenkins.”

“I’m nineteen,” Mallory says, challenging.

“You have that habit,” Jay Pegg says, pained, and biting himself off. “You two don’t have much in common besides your face, but you have the same habit he did where you squint and it looks like a wink.”

Mallory does it again, and hopes it looks like a wink. “Was it what you saw last time?”

“Yeah,” Jay Pegg says, and kisses Mallory on the lips, in the kitchen of his family home, while his wife is talking to another patient upstairs.

This time, Mallory kisses back.

He doesn’t really know how to, but Jay Pegg guides him through it. Jay Pegg’s warm, big hand tilts his face to one side and Jay Pegg’s lips are reassuring when they nudge apart and suck on his lips. Mallory becomes lost to everything, then, as another hand moves up his back and he feels Jay Pegg’s tongue in his mouth.

Mallory can feel himself migrating into Jay Pegg’s lap, but he is helpless to stop it. All he can think about is this need to fall into someone’s embrace, and be caught in their chest.

Jay Pegg ruins it by saying, “I never do this,” as they break apart. He’s mortified, but, as Mallory can clearly tell by the boner he feels under his ass, also extremely turned on.

Mallory is a little freaked out too. “I’ve never _done_ this.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jay Pegg says, with his hand—Mallory realizes—now on Mallory’s thigh.

Neither of them moves.

“But you want to, right?” Mallory says.

“Mr. Jenkins. Mallor—”

Mallory rubs his ass against Jay Pegg’s dick, hard and big through two layers of pants.

“Jesus Christ,” Jay Pegg groans. “This is so wrong.”

“I’m an adult,” Mallory says, and dives back in to kiss Jay Pegg again, his throat dry with sheer, consuming need. Seducing someone isn’t difficult when his dad’s already done it for him.

Mallory is kissed hard this time, feeling his mouth go raw with Jay Pegg’s beard and his elbow grabbed and pulled closer, so he’s sprawled across Jay Pegg’s lap. He’s trying to prop himself up from Jay Pegg’s chest, trying to stay upright, but Jay Pegg takes his wrist.

“Do you really want to do this?” Jay Pegg says, guiding Mallory’s hand down, down, and before Mallory realizes it he’s loosely cupping Jay Pegg’s crotch.

Mallory whines when he feels it, warm, live, real, even still clothed. If he’s ever had any doubt before about being attracted to men it’s all quashed now. He squeezes, just a little.

“Yeah,” Mallory says, hoarse.

They do it in the garage, in the Peggs’ car. There’s no real room for anything beyond Jay Pegg rubbing himself off against Mallory’s ass and fingerfucking Mallory until he comes, but it’s enough to wreck Mallory completely. He feels so fucking young right then, coming just with a man’s fingers in his ass and his pants not even all the way down. But at least, at least when he’s sloppily trying to kiss Jay Pegg again, rubbing his ass up and down a hot, leaking dick, he isn’t thinking about how much it hurts that his dad died.

“I’ll,” Jay Pegg says, hesitant, “I’ll call you,” when Mallory has gathered enough of himself to walk back to his own car in the driveway.

“No,” Mallory decides. “I have people staying with me. I can’t—”

“That’s okay,” Jay Pegg says quickly. Awkwardly. “Let me get you my phone number.”

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Mallory doesn’t really know what’s going to happen once he calls Jay Pegg in the middle of the goddamn day or whatever. Doesn’t know what he’ll say or what Jay Pegg’ll do. Isn’t even sure if Jay Pegg just wants to explain himself or if he wants to do more things to Mallory, and Mallory doesn’t want to ask. It’d be real lame if he asked. Goddammit.

Mallory stares at Jay Pegg’s phone number for a second, and looks up.

“Just to be clear, when I call you it’ll be to have sex again.”

“Jesus Christ Mallory,” Jay Pegg groans in pain. “Yeah. Call me when you want to have sex again.”

“Okay,” Mallory says, and pockets the number. Maybe he’ll lose it, and it’ll be for the best.

***

Mallory makes it about a week until he calls Jay Pegg. It will be a couple of excruciating exchanges on the phone until they have it down, and Mallory only has to say, Hey, before Jay Pegg gets it and just makes him write down a time and a place. It is usually somewhere halfway between Mallory’s house and downtown Kollok, where Jay Pegg works, and it is usually something like 2pm when Mallory calls, when his day feels empty and he misses his fucking dad and his fucking best friend. And then they drive to a motel and they have sex while Jay Pegg complains about Mallory’s stupid flashy car. The car _is_ terrible for any kind of subterfuge, but they haven’t been caught yet.

The most annoying and embarrassing thing is that Jay Pegg always makes sure that Mallory comes. They can be doing ass fucking which hurts like a bitch and Mallory still has to come, painful and cramping on a huge fucking dick and he still comes his brains out, because maybe this is what he needed all along, for something to hurt, but also for it to still feel good.

Even Mallory knows that he can’t write this in his journal entry. _Hey, Mrs. Pegg. I’m not cutting myself anymore because your husband is fucking me on the side. Does he also call you baby in bed?_

He feels guiltier about Mrs. Pegg than he does about Em. It is hard to think about anything at all when he has his legs wrapped around Jay Pegg’s shoulder and Jay Pegg’s dick pumping in and out of his ass, but the last person he’d feel guilty about is Em Pegg. Em is his friend until it affects her family. Like, Em Pegg has her fucking perfect family over here, and the rest of them can be fucked up over there. Her family is not so perfect anymore now, is it?

Would a perfect husband go around his wife and fuck a nineteen-year-old? Would a perfect father let his daughter’s friend sit on his lap, ride his dick and call him daddy? That last one was… Mallory doesn’t even know where it came from, he just got caught up in the moment and did it. All that happened was that Jay Pegg asked Mallory if he wanted to try riding on his dick and he did, and then they were sat back against the headboard in that fucking dimly lit motel room, and Jay Pegg was so big, the Peggs all big boned, all of them, and Mallory was so small, so light in Jay Pegg’s arms. Mallory’s head was buried in the crook of Jay Pegg’s neck, almost hiding from what’s happening, hiding from himself, needing to be shielded from the world by this older man who has both of his hands on Mallory’s ass. For a moment it seemed like that was what a dad should have been, giving him what he needed, always there, answering when he calls.

And Mallory needed it to hurt. He needed to not be able to think about anything else. He needed it to hurt and to feel good afterward, so he begged Jay Pegg to fuck him harder, said please, said “Please, daddy.”

“Yeah baby,” Jay Pegg said, and obliged.

Mallory can’t recall what he babbled when he finally came, his body too sore and Jay Pegg already having to manhandle him up and down his dick himself by that point, but Mallory knows he called Jay Pegg daddy a few more times after that. Blind, thoughtless, clean out of his mind with neediness and lust.

Later, as Mallory put on his shirt and was about to leave, Jay Pegg tugged on Mallory’s sleeve and reeled him into his arms.

“I don’t know how I feel about you calling me daddy,” Jay Pegg said, hypocritically.

Mallory shifts. It feels too fatherly when he’s held like this. Feels too good.

“Was it weird?”

“A little. I mean, seeing as you’re friends with Em.”

It was as close as they’d ever gotten to talking about what the fuck they were doing.

Mallory didn’t want to talk about it. He nestled closer to Jay Pegg, groping at his chest a little but mostly just holding on. “I guess it doesn’t matter if it feels weird. Just, you know, if it feels good.”

Jay Pegg kissed him, lingering and firm. “It felt good for you?”

“Yeah man. I’m nineteen. I’m gonna be into some weird stuff.”

“Okay,” Jay Pegg said. “It felt good for me too. We don’t have to worry about anything else.”

Really, nothing else? How about Tiffany Pegg, your wife, or Emily Pegg, your daughter? But if even Jay Pegg says it—if even an adult says it, and not just a failed mayoral candidate masquerading as an adult—then it must be true. They have nothing to worry about, except their hubris and other problems of their own making.

***

Hank almost catches them, once.

What happens is that Hank comes home just as Mallory’s gotten back from the motel and hasn’t showered yet, and Mallory is shrugging off his coat and saying, “Hi,” trailing off as he sees Hank just standing there at the front door and staring at him, struck with some kind of fever, surely, for how his face turns red.

“You look different,” Hank says, strangled. “Why are you flushed? Have you always looked, I mean, has anyone told you you looked pretty?”

Yes, but Jay Pegg doesn’t count.

Mallory flushes some more. “You _are_ sick,” he says. “Let me.”

Mallory goes over and presses his palm Hank’s forehead, and then his cheeks, but then Hank groans, “You smell different too. Why do you smell like, God, why do you smell like you’ve been jerking off?”

“What,” Mallory screeches, and jumps two feet away from Hank. Fuck, does he smell like cum? Is it leaking out of his pants? He’s only been able to keep this a secret because no one’s asked him a direct question about it, the idea of him banging Jay Pegg—the idea of Mallory banging anyone at all—apparently too absurd to ever consider.

Hank lurches after him.

“You’re so sweaty too, even though it’s fucking cold out.”

“No, I was just,” Mallory stammers. “I was just at the training center. You know I take jujitsu.”

“Really,” Hank says, moving closer again. Mallory steps back, his leg hitting the couch. “Can I come next time?”

Mallory swallows. He only sweats more, not less. “It’s in the middle of the day.”

“You always tell me to skip class,” Hank says, staring at Mallory’s lips. Fuck, Mallory thinks Jay Pegg bit him there, once or twice. It stings.

“It’s a program for recovering drug addicts only! There are lots of afterschool boxing gyms you can go to instead!”

“You told me you didn’t take drugs yourself! Why are you lying to me?”

Because Hank can’t know. Because deep down Mallory knows what he’s doing is wrong.

“I don’t want to lie to you!” Mallory says finally, and lets himself fall onto the couch. Sinks into it, hands over his head.

Mallory feels Hank’s hands grab his wrist and move them from his face. Oddly gentle and tentative.

“Don’t ask me why,” Hank says, his voice breaking. “I’m gonna do a thing but don’t ask me why.”

“That sounds omi—”

Hank kneels down next to the couch and kisses Mallory, artlessly and inexpertly, but Mallory can feel the hunger all the same. Hank’s lips catch onto where Mallory’s been bitten red, as if Hank’s been thinking about it, about how it would taste.

Mallory doesn’t have to ask why. There’s really never been any need to ask why someone would kiss you, because the answer is right there, and the answer is the same whether that person is a forty-something dad or a sixteen-year-old boy. Mallory’s been called an idiot but he wasn’t wrong about this. The point, the entire point, is that they don’t need words for this, for something that can be communicated by so clear a gesture as a kiss.

Mallory doesn’t kiss Hank back. Hank’s hands move to his shoulders for leverage, and once Mallory has his wrists free he gently pushes Hank away.

“Hank, I. First, that was very flattering, but I—”

“Oh, fuck you, Mallory.”

“What?” Mallory squeaks. “What did I do?”

“Don’t let me down gently or some bullshit like that!”

Mallory has to do a doubletake. “You _want_ me to be disgusted?”

Hank’s voice is small.

“Aren’t you disgusted? I mean, grossed out, at least?”

“No!” Mallory says, before he can even think about it. “Never by you, alright?” He taps his chest with his fist. “Never by you. I love you.”

Hank laughs. “Thanks. But also don’t say that. You’re the worst.”

“No. I’ll keep saying it.” Mallory grins. “I love you bro. You still have a killer bod.”

“Oh my God,” Hank says, getting up and running away. “You can’t say that anymore now.”

Mallory thinks about demanding that Hank tells him he loves him too, but that would probably be going too far.

***

The upside of Hank almost finding out about Mallory and Jay Pegg is that now, every time the conversation turns to the age-inappropriate kiss, Mallory can just pivot to the age-appropriate one, and the girls can pile all the teasing on Hank. Which, of course they all found out about the kiss right away, because Mallory still can’t keep a secret. Like, if it was an important secret he would never break, but if it’s a little secret he’d have lasted not very long at all. They were relitigating the kiss again and Laura basically asked Mallory if Jay Pegg would still be attracted to a clone of Mearl Jenkins and Mallory basically hung Hank out to dry. He said something like, “Why don’t you ask Hank about it,” and watched the group devolve into chaos.

At the end of it, Em Pegg has become convinced that Hank and Mallory were made for each other, and Mallory needs to get over his heteronormativity or some bullshit like that.

“It makes sense,” she says. “They’re both,” and she does an offensive gesture with her finger and her head.

“Yeah,” Mickey says, immediately.

“That’s why my dad wouldn’t. I mean. He’s said himself that he thinks Mallory’s not too bright.”

“Hey,” Mallory protests. He has almost forgotten that Jay Pegg doesn’t really think highly of him at all.

Sometimes Mallory is startled by the things he doesn’t know about Jay Pegg. Em would be over talking to Laura, and she’d randomly tell them about the little pranks she and her dad like to play on each other, or she’d tell them that her parents haven’t been to a protest for the last couple of years, all things that Mallory wouldn’t know; domestic, painfully cheesy stuff about a married man that makes him seem more human instead of a random guy who can give Mallory what he needs.

But there’s never been any time to learn if he wanted to. Five months after they started fucking, suddenly and unexpectedly, as if woken up from a dream, Jay Pegg ends it.

It was enough time for the cuts to start disappearing on Mallory’s arm. Mallory thinks it’d be nice for Jay Pegg to know how much he’s helped him, but apparently Jay Pegg doesn’t want to hear that Mallory isn’t getting better, and that Mallory’s been kinda thinking of the sex as a replacement for the cuts.

“I thought I was helping you,” Jay Pegg says, his voice colder than Mallory’s ever heard it. “Instead I’m just something else for you to destroy yourself with.”

“That’s not how it works,” Mallory says, flabbergasted. “Your dick can’t heal me or something. Like, I can’t get less sad just because we have sex.”

“I thought it was,” Jay Pegg says, “I thought it was the company. Like, maybe, me being there. I don’t know.” He presses his knuckles against his forehead, as if he has a migraine.

Mallory inches himself farther away from Jay Pegg, on the bed, and begins buttoning up his shirt. They’re in another motel room, their hours almost run out. It’s a good thing too, because it’s probably about to get extremely awkward.

Jay Pegg gets up from the bed too.

“I thought at least with your dad. I. Now you’re saying you’re just using me?”

“I didn’t use you!”

“You did! To hurt yourself. Em said you had a habit of using people and I didn’t believe her.”

“I don’t get it,” Mallory says, feeling slow again. He hates being a step behind everyone else. “What was I supposed to do?”

“The fact that you don’t even know,” Jay Pegg says through gritted teeth.

“Did you want me to be my dad? I’m not my dad.”

Jay Pegg grabs the front of Mallory’s shirt.

“When people do this, Mallory, they’re supposed to at least care about each other. One person isn’t supposed to be interchangeable with any other man who can give them pain.”

“You’re not inter—interchangeable,” Mallory says. “I mean, no one else would. And you already like my dad, so.”

Jay Pegg flinches. “It’s because I’m the only one who would fuck you?”

“Why are you angry,” Mallory shouts, tired of people being mad at him for no reason whatsoever. “You’re the one treating me like a clone of my dad.”

“I never did that!”

“Why else would you fuck someone who you think is so dumb you wouldn’t even vote for them then?”

“This all started wrong,” Jay Pegg says slowly, grabbing his coat. “We’ve both been trying to fuck a dead man.”

“What? No.”

“I’m sorry, Mallory,” Jay Pegg says.

Mallory feels queasy.

“Are you. Mr. Pegg, Jay, are you—”

“I’m sorry.”

“I need you,” Mallory blurts out. “Don’t leave. I need you.”

“To hurt yourself, I know,” Jay Pegg says, rueful. Mallory leaps out of the bed, but Jay Pegg easily handles him, makes him sit back down, gentler now than he’s ever been before, and something about the gesture shocks Mallory into quiescence. “I’m sorry, Mallory,” he says again. “I can’t be party to this anymore.”

Then he leaves. Just like that.

Malloy doesn’t remember much of what happens next. He knows that he sat there motionless for so long, right where Jay Pegg left him, that he was kicked out of the motel. He knows that he drove himself home. And he knows that Hank saw him run into the bathroom with his kit. Through all of it, he knows his sheer need to not be himself, to escape for a little while, to find that place in himself where he could hide, to find that red streak on white tile, a sharp pain that could make him temporarily forget about the deeper one, because it’s a sharp but controllable pain.

Hank’s banging on the door. Chances are he can’t break it down, not yet, but all the banging’s very annoying anyway.

“Promise,” Mallory calls out, loud enough for Hank to hear. “Promise you won’t try to stop it. Promise you’ll just sit with me and watch.”

“Mallory—”

“Please,” Mallory says. The banging has stopped, and Mallory feels everything getting a little hazier. “I need… Just sit with me, and don’t—”

“Okay. Okay,” Hank’s voice is soothing, somehow. “Open the door Mallory.”

Mallory does. And Hank keeps his word. He hugs Mallory from behind but otherwise he’s just sitting there in silence, his breaths turning into some strange music in Mallory’s ears as Mallory drifts off into half-dreams, full of uncomplicated nothings, both of them watching the bleeding on Mallory’s arms become sluggish and stop, like it always does.

Hank helps Mallory bandage it up because Mallory can’t think right now. Probably, not enough blood is going to his brains.

“I’m sorry,” Mallory says.

Hank runs his fingers over Mallory’s other cuts, most of them fully healed.

“You’ve been doing so well. Goddammit, Mallory.”

“He left me.” Mallory wants to cry. He needs to explain, but he still can’t think.

Fuck, Mallory _is_ crying a little, he realizes. He grabs Hank’s shirt and hides his face in it. “I needed him and he left me.”

Hank is hugging him again. “Who left you?”

Mallory hiccups. His arm still hurts.

“Mallory, who left you?”

“Jay Pegg. Mr. Pegg. In my head I call him Jay Pegg because Mr. Pegg is Em’s dad and that doesn’t feel okay.”

“Fucking Christ,” Hank says feelingly, the rumble of it resonating against Mallory’s head. The rest of Hank’s furious muttering is lost to Mallory as he falls the rest of the way into sleep, held in Hank’s arms, still sitting in the bathroom with the lights on. Maybe some of the guilt has left him, with the tears.

***

It turns out that one Hank Butcher cannot carry Mallory into bed by himself, and they were there until Laura came home and Hank meekly called out for help. It started a chain reaction, where Hank told Laura, and Laura told Em Pegg, and Em Pegg finds Mallory the next day, in his house and actually trying to do the fucking dishes, and she nearly strangles him before just taking it out on the china, instead.

The plate hits the far wall and shatters like a bitch. There are small pieces on Em’s clothes.

“What happened?” Hank bursts in. He’s evidently been chasing Em all the way.

“My dad told me you made the first move,” Em says wretchedly, and ignores Hank completely. “Is that true?”

Mallory holds onto the counter for support. He wishes he has more blood going to his head now.

“You talked to your dad?”

“I called him. Now tell me why the fuck you made a move on my dad.”

Hank steps in between them. “It doesn’t matter whether or not Mallory made the first move. Your dad shouldn’t have cheated on your mom and fucked a nineteen-year-old in the first place.”

“I didn’t,” Mallory yelps, outraged now. “I didn’t though. He kissed me again and I just went along with it.”

“He told me you winked at him again.”

Okay, so Mallory wasn’t crazy. “He admitted to kissing me first?”

Em looks more troubled now.

“He said you created that moment. He said you were just waiting for him to kiss you.”

Was he? Mallory doesn’t know. All he wanted was to do something reckless, to see what he could make men do, to see what would happen if he lets himself want what he shouldn’t.

“Listen to yourself,” Hank says. “All of that just sounds like excuses. Em, you’re not even angry at Mallory, you’re angry at your dad.”

“I know that,” Em snaps. She pulls herself together, brushes the broken china pieces off her coat, and purposefully grabs the broom from the closet to start sweeping up the mess.

Slower, more thoughtful, she says, “I think I’ve just been looking for a reason to forgive him.”

“Yeah,” Mallory says, slumping against the wall behind him. But then he remembers. “Don’t be too hard on him though. It was me calling him every time.”

Em stops sweeping. “What would happen after you call him?”

“I don’t think—”

“Mallory!”

“You’re under eighteen! I think I could be arrested for telling you what happens between two adults.”

“I’m twenty,” Em screeches. “I might actually kill you now.”

“Fine, fine, I forgot. I lost a lot of blood okay?”

Wait. Mallory mentally slaps himself.

“Jesus Christ,” Em mutters. “We’ll talk about that later.”

Mallory nods toward Hank.

“Can he leave? He’s like sixteen.”

“I‘m not leaving you alone with her,” Hank protests.

Em is at the end of her patience. “I won’t actually hurt Mallory! Not after he hurt himself like an idiot.”

“Mallory tends to make people…angry.”

“Fine,” Mallory says. He needs to focus. He presses against the new cut. “I’d call him in the middle of the day and we’d meet in a motel. That’s it. Oh, and then he dumped me because he thought I was using him or something.”

Hank is still hovering next to him. “You never told me that.”

“No, that one is on my dad.” Em grits her teeth. “He knew he was hooking up with a teenager who’s just lost his dad. What the fuck was he thinking?”

Mallory is getting dizzy again. He closes his eyes. “Don’t be too hard on him, okay? I don’t want to be the reason your parents break up.”

Em laughs incredulously. “A little late for that, don’t you think?”

A hand on Mallory’s shoulder. He realizes that even with his eyes closed he can tell that it’s Hank.

“I don’t think you should tell your mom,” Hank says. “Now would be a great time to not share everything.”

“Stay out of this, Billy,” Em snaps. She knows Hank hates being called Billy. “Don’t you dare put this on me. Mallory and my dad fucked this up.”

“But it’s your choice now—”

“I swear to God, Billy—”

Hank puts his hands up in surrender.

“I’m sorry,” Mallory says instead. He doesn’t think he’s actually said it to her yet.

But he does feel sorry.

Em deflates.

“I’m sorry too,” she says. “He didn’t, did he, I mean.” With extreme trepidation, she asks, “Did he make you do anything you didn’t want to?”

“He didn’t make me dress up like my dad if that’s what you meant.”

“That is not what I meant.”

Mallory heaves a sigh. Opens his eyes again.

“I’m an adult, Em.”

“You’re _nineteen_. You’re _pretending_ to be an adult.”

“I’m with Em on that actually,” Hank says. “It’s a little fucked up, what he did. Don’t downplay it.”

Mallory can’t take the hypocrisy.

“Em, you don’t have, like, any ground to tell me off about dating older people.”

“ _I’m_ not dating Ven because I have a daddy kink!”

“What?” It’s Mallory’s turn to screech. “I do not have a daddy kink.”

“You admitted with your mouth that you had daddy issues.”

“That’s not what it means! It just means I have issues about my dad dying.”

“Oh my god, I’m leaving,” Em announces. “By the way, you definitely want to fuck dads now.”

“No, I don’t, oh my God, project much?” Mallory shouts. But Em isn’t angry at him, so he feels slightly cheered already. It’s not going to be okay, nothing’s going to be okay, but at least he hasn’t lost his friend, not to a hole in the ground and not through his own mistake.

Mallory finally slumps to the ground, the relief of it crashed over him in a wave. Hank catches him with a hand on his back.

Distantly, Mallory can hear Hank calling out after Em.

“Hey, what are you going to do about your parents?”

Em’s footsteps stop. She’s out of the kitchen, but not yet at the door.

“My dad has to decide whether or not to tell her, and they’re going to have to figure it out themselves,” she says finally. “I can’t do anything about it this time.”

She’s probably right, even though that’s not what Mallory wants at all. He wants the Peggs to stay together. He wants to still be able to call Jay Pegg up. And he wants all of his friends to not have found out. But maybe it was always unsustainable, what they did. Twin, careless delusions on both sides that were spiraling out of control until they collide into each other and turn into a brewing storm.

Mallory wants to try calling Jay Pegg again. He wants Hank to be there and stop him when he does.

***

Mallory finds out what happened the next day when Mrs. Pegg calls to tell him she can no longer be his therapist.

“Conflicts of interest,” she says. “I’ve already asked one of my colleagues to take you on.”

“Did he tell you?” Mallory asks. “I’m sorry, I’m assuming that he did, but—”

“This is not something I want to discuss with you, Mr. Jenkins.”

The funny thing is that Mrs. Pegg used to call him Mallory, and Jay Pegg used to call him Mr. Jenkins. Does Mrs. Pegg hate him now? She has to hate him now.

“I’m not sure I need more therapy,” Mallory says finally. “I mean, you don’t need to—”

There’s disbelieving laughter from the other side of the line.

“You absolutely need more therapy, since you haven’t remotely dealt with your father’s death in any way.” Mallory means to protest this, but she barrels him over. “Look, I can’t talk to you about this anymore, but you are also self-harming and not being honest with me. You have to continue your therapy, Mr. Jenkins.”

“I… Sorry,” Mallory says.

“ _Are_ you sorry?” Mrs. Pegg asks. “Oh my god, I didn’t mean to say that. I can’t have this conversation with you.”

“Mrs. Pegg—”

“Did you feel sorry at all for sleeping with my husband?”

“I did! But you were okay with the kiss—”

“That’s not the same thing,” she snaps.

“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t know,” Mallory says. He can’t help confessing everything to her like he always does. “I couldn’t tell. This was my first, well, I mean, not relationship, but my first everything else really, and I—”

“Oh my god, I’m sorry Mallory,” Mrs. Pegg says, sounding mortified. “I didn’t mean to blame you. He should never have. You’re so young. And he knew you were at a vulnerable place.”

Mallory doesn’t like how often he has to remind people that he’s an adult.

“I’m nineteen.”

“I know,” Mrs. Pegg says. “You’re a nineteen-year-old whose dad just died and who doesn’t have any adult you can trust.”

“He didn’t take advantage of me, if that’s what you’re implying,” Mallory says hotly. It was both more and less than that. Mallory is not a young and dumb girl with daddy issues, and their affair wasn’t some predatory thing that Mrs. Pegg has read about in one of her books.

Mrs. Pegg takes a deep breath. Mallory recognizes the sound from the times in therapy where he went on too long about jujitsu and double wrist locks instead of answering her what she asked.

“Mallory, I want you to promise me to call Dr. Finkelstein,” she says. “I will read you her number and I will send your files to her office if you think you can continue your therapy with her. If not, we can find you another psychiatrist. You have the final say in who it’s going to be. Promise me, Mallory.”

Why did his therapy turn into him being told he needs more help than ever before? Wasn’t he supposed to get better? Mrs. Pegg didn’t even know what was wrong with him.

“I probably can’t pay her anyway,” Mallory says, taking the easy way out.

“You are not paying me now. _Medicaid_ is paying for your therapy.”

“Wait, I’m nineteen.”

“Well, minor Medicaid fraud is paying for your therapy,” Mrs. Pegg says. And then, “Just talk to her,” she insists, when Mallory falls silent. “You can be more honest with her about what happened between you and Jay.”

Oh god. “Did you tell her?”

“No!” Mrs. Pegg says quickly. “You can decide whether or not to tell her yourself. But Mallory, it won’t work if you aren’t honest.”

“Do you hate me?” Mallory asks, unbidden. He just, he just really badly wants her to not hate him.

Mrs. Pegg sighs.

“Promise me, Mallory, and I’ll tell you.”

Mallory thinks this is what his dad used to do to try to get Mallory to eat his food, when he was very young.

“Okay,” Mallory says. “I’ll call Mrs. Finkelstein.”

“I can’t hate you, Mallory.” Mrs. Pegg sighs. “Not for long anyway. I suspect that’s why Em’s been so protective of you as well.”

Mallory sits down on the chair in his kitchen. He realizes he’s been clutching at the edge of the table all this time.

“Thanks, Mrs. Pegg.”

A burst of static from the other side. Mallory doesn’t even attempt to decipher that one.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Jenkins. Now, get out your pen and paper and take down this number, please. Tell me when I can start reading.”

“Okay,” Mallory says, though he cradles the receiver for a few more moments before he goes.

He thinks he’s being forgiven, or at least, he’s in the process of being forgiven. Not everything is going to be okay. But some things are. Some things will be, and that has to be enough.

***

Mrs. Finkelstein is sixty-two-year-old, which Em Pegg insultingly says must even be outside of Mallory’s “strike range.” She’s the one other psychiatrist who lives in town and has probably, unethically used some kind of truth serum to make Mallory confess everything on the very first session. Afterward, she even refuses to let Mallory see her notes, even though Mallory just wants to see if she has written “daddy kink” on there, because she would be wrong, and he has to correct the record.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Mallory explains. “It’s not like I’m trying to find someone like my dad or something, because my dad is not like Mr. Pegg at all.”

Mrs. Finkelstein’s face is inscrutable. Mallory squirms.

“How is he unlike your dad?”

“He’s an actual good dad, first of all,” Mallory says. “Em Pegg was talking about how he tried to use DnD to teach her real life skills or something, and my dad did none of that shit. My dad kept talking about how I couldn’t get good grades like he used to, but you know, what they teach in school is different now. It’s all hard shit—”

“Mallory, how do you feel about Mr. Pegg now? Do you still think he’s a good dad?”

Mallory bristles. “This doesn’t, I mean, sleeping with me doesn’t automatically make him a bad father or something. It just, I don’t know. This has nothing to do with Em.”

“Do you consider Mr. Pegg sleeping with you to just be an extension of him being a father?”

“No! I went to him for help once or twice, but I didn’t treat him like my fucking dad.”

Mallory realizes he’s standing up a little, so he sits back down on the couch. It’s softer and smaller than the one in Mrs. Pegg’s office. Mallory can’t lie down on it, which shatters his image of how all therapists operate.

“Mallory,” Mrs. Finkelstein says, lowering her glasses. “I am saying that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be with someone who can provide you with comfort and support. Jay Pegg was just not that person for you. He was too selfish himself.”

Why does Mallory feel like she’s saying that there’s nothing wrong with his daddy kink?

“What do you mean?” He asks slowly, making sure. “Also, Mr. Pegg was fine. I mean, I don’t want to defend him, but why are you trying to make him into a bad father or something?”

“He broke up with you as soon as he learned you didn’t feel as strongly about him,” she says. “And he did it without any care for your mental health at all.”

Mallory was kind of trying to forget that day. He sinks down further in the couch.

He keeps trying to forget it because he gets madder the more he thinks about it. Jay Pegg just upped and left him, like everyone else, even though he begged him to stay. Mallory thought he could depend on someone for a little bit, at least for this, at least for this tiny bit of creature comfort they both want, and then it turns out even that was too much to ask.

“The two of you both did very selfish things,” Mrs. Finkelstein says. “You are nineteen. Jay Pegg is not.”

But that was the point of sleeping with someone older, wasn’t it? Jay Pegg should have told Mallory if it was wrong. Jay Pegg should have stopped them before they did anything. It might turn out, really, that adulthood is a lie. That you only grow less cool and less true as you grow up, doing things your younger self would be ashamed of, like Em Pegg enlisting in the military and Mearl Jenkins leaving people to die underground. It might turn out that Mallory would be better off not growing up at all.

If Mallory was just defective a clone as the rest of his brothers, would he even be able to grow up, or might he as well be dead?

“I disagree,” Mrs. Finkelstein says. “I’m much older than you and I’m pretty cool.”

Mallory coughs. “If you could just not say the word _cool_. It makes the word itself somehow less cool if you say it.”

The dagger stare she gives him is nothing compared to Laura’s, and she’s his doctor, so he’s pretty sure he’s covered by the Hypocritical Oath.

***

Hank has become a little too obvious in the interim. He skips school and comes with Mallory to the training center, which was the one thing Mallory _didn’t_ lie about, and bristles at everyone in Mallory’s class when they call him Mallory’s little bro. He also picks up more shifts at Major Video when Mallory complains about missing the mortgage payments, which is fucked, right? Hank should be going to school, not trying to pay off Mearl Jenkins’ debts.

Laura says as much when they’re arguing about it over dinner, and then she asks Hank slowly, as if in realization, “Hank, you’re not trying to become Mallory’s dad, are you?”

Mallory bursts out laughing, and then stops, because Hank’s not laughing with him.

“Oh my God,” Laura says.

“First of all, that’s ridiculous,” Mallory says. “Why would he do that? Second of all, Hank, tell her you’re not doing that.”

Hank coughs. “I’m not saying I want to be your dad, Mallory, but seems clear to me why, if someone was into you, they’d try to be your dad.”

“For the last time,” Mallory mutters, “I don’t have a daddy kink.”

Laura grimaces. “Let’s just say that I wouldn’t introduce you to any of the older guys I work with.”

Mallory is a little affronted. “It’s not just older guys! It’s guys who seem like they’d be good dads.”

He regrets it as soon as it comes out of his mouth.

“Oh my God,” says Hank hoarsely.

Laura snorts, and then begins laughing more loudly the more she thinks about it.

“Uh,” Mallory says. “Let’s all pretend I didn’t say that.”

Where the fuck did that come from? Like, all Mallory wanted to do was explain that he’s read those daddy kink hentai and all those men seemed like they’d be terrible dads. He wouldn’t have slept with any of them, ergo, he doesn’t have a daddy kink.

“Also,” Mallory says loudly, when Laura doesn’t stop laughing and Hank doesn’t stop staring at him in horror, “Mrs. Finkelstein says that I’m just looking for people who seem like they’d provide comfort and support and stuff. It’s not weird.”

Laura shakes her head. “Then why didn’t you go for any of your friends who have actually saved your life?”

“None of you kissed me!” And then, because Hank did kiss him. “None of you are an adult!”

Hank gestures angrily with his hands. “That’s what I was trying to do! Be an adult, because you kept saying all you wanted was your dad back.”

Fuck. In hindsight that may have given them the wrong ideas.

“I didn’t mean it like _that_.”

“We can read between the lines.”

“Can we stop talking about it?” Mallory snaps. It’s not very effective. “Can we just focus on what matters here? Hank, stop trying to be my dad. I can’t love you anymore than I do now.”

“Oh my God,” Laura says to the ceiling. “Lord, I can’t with these boys.”

Hank blinks at Mallory, shy again, like he can sometimes be when people are nice to him.

“Do you mean it?”

“Yeah, dude,” Mallory says, and it’s true. Sometimes it feels like Mallory’s heart can burst with affection for Hank, this earnest and weird boy who can always make him laugh. They can just be playing dumb games together and Mallory can find everything Hank does endearing, because Hank never has any malice or meanness and he never puts Mallory down, like everybody else does. It’s just so easy to be with Hank. Mallory never has to wonder if he’s being made fun of, if he needs to have his guard up, or why Hank would be so friendly one day and cold the next. Hank is kind of loyal, in a strange way, because once you have his affection he never looks back. He’s in Mallory’s corner, always, almost like how Mallory once thought Marcus would be, when they were still each other’s only friend.

Hank grins.

“Okay,” Hank says. “Love you too, man.”

***

The compromise is that Hank doesn’t pick up shifts at Major Video, but he can still go to Mallory’s training center if he makes the other Billy fill in for him so he doesn’t have to skip school. The guys in Mallory’s program are chill anyway, even with a high school kid, because sometimes they do go to the ring and practice but most of the time they just have to learn the moves first, see how it’s done, some twenty of them crowded around a small television to watch the tapes that their instructor, Skipper, bought from some guy in Brazil. They’d watch instructional tapes of the Gracie family and then some actual fights from the Gracie challenge, and Skipper’d be up at the front demonstrating the chokes. Nobody knows why a grandmaster like Skipper would be there teaching jujitsu to former drug addicts, but nobody really wants to ask, in case he’d get wise.

“Dude, you’re getting it,” Skipper’d tell Mallory when he’s practicing with Hank. “Nice form.”

“Thanks dude,” Mallory says, panting harshly, half muffled, his mouth up against Hank’s legs.

“I see where you’re getting it from,” Hank says, laughing, when they’re on their way back from the center. “Everyone’s really cool and supportive.”

Mallory bumps Hank’s shoulder. “It’s not about how much you can do right now. It’s about how you are compared to where you were a year ago. These guys get that.”

“So you can feel yourself getting better?” Hank asks carefully. Mallory scratches the back of his neck.

“I guess?”

“I mean, you don’t have to be getting better.”

Finally Mallory gets it. He waits for both of them to get into the car before he answers.

“Mrs. Finkelstein wants me to take some meds,” he confesses. He hasn’t told anyone else. “She says I probably have depression, but I told her I don’t have some pussy shit like that.”

“Mallory!” Hank says, his head whipping around, as if looking for Em Pegg or Laura or Tibby, anyone else who’d usually have this conversation. When they don’t seem to materialize out of thin air, Hank groans. “We’ve told you this so many times. It’s not a bad thing to have feelings. I mean, I got lots of feelings.”

“You do?”

Hank throws up his hands. “I’m anxious like constantly. And I have feelings for _you_.”

“Oh,” Mallory says. Why does that make him feel so bad? Distantly he kind of hopes he hasn’t made fun of Hank for having feelings. “Well, it doesn’t matter since one of the side effects is erectile dysfunction and I can’t have that.”

“What? That can’t be true.”

“It is! Mrs. Finkelstein told me!”

“Well,” Hank hedges. “Maybe you not being able to have an erection can be a good thing.”

“Is this about the daddy kink thing again? We talked about this. I’m not going to go after every dad I see.”

“Yeah,” Hank says, shrugging, and still a little flushed from the training. “I know, dude. I know.”

But Mallory is already thinking about Jay Pegg again. He hates how it ended, raw and abrupt and without closure for them both. Mallory wants to explain: That he didn’t mean to let everyone know, that it wasn’t revenge, and that he wasn’t a scorned woman. And he wants Jay Pegg to explain: That it wasn’t a daddy kink thing, that they were both adults, and that if Mallory wanted to they could do it again. A part of Mallory still hopes that knowing what they know now, they wouldn’t make the same mistake. Mallory would try to be more considerate and Jay Pegg wouldn’t break up with Mallory or he definitely will tell everyone this time too.

In seeming direct intervention into that plan, Hank has been trying to keep Mallory so occupied he wouldn’t have any time to seduce father figures around town. Hank attends Mallory’s jiujitsu class, hangs out at Mallory’s house, hosts role playing games where Mallory gets the best stats. But Mallory still feels himself fray, little by little, and tether on the edge, because Hank still has to go to school, and in the meanwhile Mallory still has to go into job interviews where he tries to guess what people want and fails miserably. He’s interviewed for every restaurant in town, it feels like. The last manager told him she wouldn’t let him anywhere near customer service, and the one before that bluntly said that they interviewed him just in case the other applicant who hadn’t sold drugs got a job somewhere else. He doesn’t know why he tried if he’s just going to be rejected. Doesn’t remember the last time that something went right.

Things seemed to be getting better until they don’t. Slowly and inexorably, Mallory feels himself sliding into a sort of passive desperation that can incapacitate him at random times of day. Maybe it’s because even his power to destroy himself is being taken away, so that there’s nothing left for him to do except continue living in this town, for a certain definition of “living,” as though this bad copy of Mearl Jenkins deserves to live.

Mallory doesn’t make a conscious decision to cut himself again. It just feels like the last bit of control he has left, and if he does it on his legs it’s harder to notice and he can slash multiple cuts into them at once, not having to stop until he feels better, until his head clears and his problems seem small again, insignificant in the calm light of the day.

Then Hank and Laura would come home, and all would be good.

***

Jay Pegg warns Mallory before they meet that it would be the last time.

Mallory doesn’t know what possessed Jay Pegg to agree to meet him, because clearly it’s a terrible idea. From the phone call he gathers that Jay Pegg probably wanted closure more badly than even Mallory does, badly enough to risk seeing Mallory again, even as things are rocky with Mrs. Pegg.

“It’s not that kind of betrayal,” Jay Pegg tries to explain. They’re in Jay Pegg’s car, parked innocuously on the side road to the woods and too close to where they’d find the Stone Masons, but Jay Pegg wouldn’t know that yet.

“She told me once that you’re very open with each other. It’s not a huge deal.”

Jay Pegg grumbles. “Well, I wasn’t open with her, was I? I wanted. God, I wanted to keep you to myself. You weren’t something I was willing to share with my wife.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have liked being shared,” Mallory bristles. “Also that sounds weird and creepy.”

“Not like that! I mean, I wasn’t willing to tell her about you because I didn’t know how I felt about you, and she’d have wanted to talk about everything.”

Mallory is beginning to understand.

“You were afraid she would tell you to stop. She told me that you should have known better.”

“Well, that’s part of it,” Jay Pegg says. Jay Pegg has been sneaking glances at Mallory all this time, which is pointless, because it’s not like Mallory minds being looked at.

“What’s the other part?”

Jay Pegg huffs.

“The part where I was thinking about leaving her.”

“What?” Mallory panics.

Jay Pegg rolls his eyes. “I’m only telling you this now because I realized I was being stupid. You wouldn’t have wanted that. _I_ didn’t really want that. I was just. Caught up in the moment.”

“Yeah. Sounds really dumb.”

“I know, Mallory, I know.” A self-deprecating laugh. “This is why it wouldn’t have worked.”

Now or never. Mallory swallows.

“It could have.”

Jay Pegg whips around, no longer avoiding Mallory’s eyes. “What are you saying?”

“I dunno,” Mallory says. “Depends on what you wanna do.”

It’s the most that Mallory could commit to, could bring himself to say right now, and Jay Pegg is considering it. Jay Pegg is staring at Mallory and frozen in indecision. Knowing what they know now. Maybe it could never be the same. Maybe it would be even better. But Jay Pegg takes a deep breath, squares his jaws, and the moment passes.

“No,” Jay Pegg says finally. “I don’t think even Mearl and I were ever good for each other.”

“Just, can I,” Mallory says, leaning in.

He kisses Jay Pegg. He hasn’t managed to say, _last time,_ or, _just so I know it wasn’t a dream,_ or, _I’ve never learned how to say goodbye_. He hopes the kiss can communicate it, can wrap all of his confusion and regret into a soft, lingering press of lips. A wet lick. A hand on Jay Pegg’s biceps to brace himself. And then they both know that it’s over. This time for good.

***

Hank is waiting for Mallory in the car, when he comes round. It’s hard to tell if Hank saw the kiss or not, but he is gripping the driving wheel very tightly. It could be nerves. It could be that Hank is itching to jump out and sock Jay Pegg in the nose. Mallory told him not to do it, but. Mallory needed Hank to come. He needed to have no easy way to just go home with Jay Pegg.

“Food?” Hank asks, when Mallory flops in. “Taco Bell?”

Mallory nods gratefully, and on the way there he begins drifting off to sleep. Hank’s foot may barely reach the pedal but somehow Mallory has complete trust in Hank, in the intense, earnest way Hank never takes his eyes off the road when he insists on driving the Flamethrower. Around Mallory, Kollok passes by in blurs of green, blue, apple red, flashes of metallic light. Next to him, Hank talks soothingly about school, comic books, his diary, the uncertain shapes of their circle of friends. This is fine, Mallory thinks. It is as if as long as the car is moving then Mallory can pretend that he is moving too, being carried along, not having to keep going of his own accord. Maybe that’s how you muddle through life, you let time pass and you don’t care too much about where you’re going and before you know it you’re at the Taco Bell again, with your friends, maybe or maybe not still selling drugs.

“Mallory.” Hank nudges him awake.

Mallory blinks, disoriented. He can’t tell if he’s just woken up from a short dream or a long one.

“You okay?”

“I got a call back from the Safeway in the mall,” Mallory says, unbidden. “I think I might start working there soon.”

Hank grins. “Dude. That’s great. Dude!”

“Yeah,” Mallory says, a little shy. “Thanks.”

The Safeway in the mid-morning hours always has someone standing at Utensils and muttering to herself—a lady in a rubber yellow hat who doesn’t seem to hear anyone else but the voices in her head, and a guy there wearing a uniform but who’s not an employee, constantly asking girls walking by if they want a hand. Maybe Mallory would fit right in there, in a weird way, with the strange people who all have slightly shady pasts.

Hank holds Mallory’s hand when they get out of the car.

“Is this okay?” Hank asks, not looking at him.

Mallory wonders when it will feel okay to want things that are good for him. He still wants to run headlong into a wall until it breaks. He still wants to check out once in a while and hide under the bed until he feels ridiculous and the urge goes away. It doesn’t stop, and it’s probably not going to stop any time soon, but today feels good, at least. Like time is moving forward. Hank is with him and it’s going to be okay.

“Yeah,” Mallory says, squeezing Hank’s hand. “Dude, I love you and it’s more than okay.”

Mallory’s always said it. He’s always loved Hank.

“Really,” Hank says skeptically. But he doesn’t let go.

“You’re the best thing in my life right now,” Mallory says. “And I always want you to be around.”

“I think about you all the time,” Hank whispers. “I keep wanting to do more push-ups so you say nice things about me.”

Mallory grins.

“You’re so strong, Hank,” he says, shameless. “I think you’re awesome. Have you been stretching out your shirt?”

“A little,” Hank says, and then they’re just standing there, in the Taco Bell parking lot, grinning at each other and holding hands on a perfect day.

**Author's Note:**

> I’d love to hear what you think! How’s the pairing muhahaha? How’s Mallory here??? He’s such a fun one to write.


End file.
